New $10,000 grants to support fire affected Businesses
Ever since the devastating bushfires in January, the Chamber has been advocating to all levels of Government to try and secure some financial assistance for local businesses that were “indirectly”affected by the Jan fires.
As everyone knows, most of our region relies on that summer trade to get them through the year and when the order was given to evacuate, it had a “direct” impact on our local businesses. So when the $50K from State Govt was announced and we realised that these businesses would not be eligible, we began our fight for this definition to be changed.
We have attended numerous meetings and had many a phone conversation with government departments, politicians, media, councilors and anyone who would listen to us. We had to drive home the fact that the grants already out there were doing absolutely nothing to support those indirectly affected by the fires.
We also recently conducted a business survey with the local businesses and received 90 responses to a range of questions, which showed that NONE of our businesses had received any financial support from government.
So we were very pleased to see that our persistence paid off on 11 March when the government announced they were going to be releasing a new grant which would support our businesses and at a higher amount than that we had been advocating for.
We hope this assistance will help our businesses with their immediate needs, but we will still be working to deliver many other important issues like fast tracking Investment in Infrastructure and other projects in our 2020 Business Strategy.
Details of the grant are shown below.
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This grant is funded by the Australian Government and is for small businesses in selected fire-affected Local Government Areas, as determined by state governments.
Purpose: Help you cover the costs associated with recovery following the fires.
Key points: Your revenue must have dropped by 40 per cent over a three-month period, compared to the previous year, because of the bush fires. You can be directly or indirectly affected by the bush fires.
Spend it on: Expenses such as salaries, wages, utilities, fuel and/or financial advice.
The help available for bush fire affected small businesses has also been boosted, to provide extra help and make it easier to apply. You can call your state hot line and check what is available to you. It might be more than you think. In New South Wales call 13 77 88
Applications for this grant open the week commencing 16 March 2020.
You might also like to check out the link below for a number of other support options and information on how to apply. https://www.bushfirerecovery.gov.au/small-business?
